Raskally fellows: Are copyright infringers “pirates” and “thieves”?

The skirmish over how we talk when we talk about copyright has a long history.

The habit of relying on metaphors such as "piracy" and "theft" to describe violations of copyright protections can elicit enraged reactions online—“it’s infringement, not theft!” is one common lament. True as that may be, using tough words in the copyright context is a centuries-old practice. Consider the following extracts from a 1704 essay by Daniel Defoe, known for his advocacy for authors' rights long before Robinson Crusoe was published.

Defoe envisioned a law that would "put a Stop to a certain sort of Thieving which is now in full practice in England, and which no Law extends to punish, viz. some Printers and Booksellers printing Copies none of their own." He went on to condemn "pirating Books in smaller Print, and meaner Paper, in order to sell them lower than the first Impression. Thus as soon as a Book is publish'd by the Author, a raskally Fellow buys it, and immediately falls to work upon it, and if it was a Book of a Crown, he will contract it so as to sell it for two Shillings… This is down-right robbing on the High-way…"

Such rhetorical flourishes (gotta love that "raskally Fellow" gibe!) weren't confined to unofficial writings about copyright. In 1774, when England's highest court issued a landmark decision that effectively ended an ongoing slugfest between established bookselling concerns and recently formed rival outfits, one of the judges noted that lower courts often had entered rulings that "not only stopped the sale of the pirated copies, but also obliged the pirate to account for what he had sold."

Neither "piracy" nor "theft" is mentioned in current US copyright statutes (the critics are correct that the law describes only “infringement”.) Nevertheless, modern American judges carry on the tradition of metaphor-infused descriptions of anti-copyright mischief. For instance, Pierre Leval, a prominent New York-based federal judge, gave the following characterization of "piracy" in a 1990 law review article: "Successful fabric designs, fashion accessories, toys, and videos instantly spawn parasitic industries selling cheap copies," he wrote. "These infringers incur no development cost, no advertising expense, and little risk. They free-ride on the copyright owner's publicity, undercut the market, and deprive the copyright owner of the rewards of his creation."

US jurists continue to rely on these terms as more and more copyright disputes involve online conduct. The Washington, DC-based federal judge in a suit against a group of BitTorrent enthusiasts noted last year that the defendants were accused of using the protocol to "unlawfully download a pirated copy of [a California production company's] movie onto their computers." A ruling last year by New York's highest appeals court discussed the national reach of "an injury allegedly inflicted by digital piracy…"

Some judges overseeing copyright cases can't help but (ahem) go a bit overboard with the metaphor-weaving. An Iowa federal judge hearing a recent suit over alleged online porno-pilfering had this to say about the case's defendants: "The modern day pirates at issue in this litigation do not wear tricornes and extract their ill gotten booty at cutlass point, but with a mouse and the internet. Nonetheless, their theft of property is every bit as lucrative as their brethren in the golden age of piracy."

And of course, just as Defoe did more than three hundred years ago, latter-day content creators employ "piracy" and "theft" in publications promoting their own agenda. Here's the definition of "piracy" from the Motion Picture Association of America's online FAQ: "Piracy is theft and includes the unauthorized copying, distribution, performance or other use of copyrighted materials. With regard to film and television, the term primarily relates to downloading, uploading, linking to, or otherwise providing access to unauthorized copies of movies, television shows or other copyrighted content on the Internet …"

Notice that the MPAA definition covers a relatively broad array of misconduct, while the robe-wearing crowd generally uses "piracy" to characterize large-scale, typically profit-motivated violations of copyright. But both approaches reflect a desire to persuade the world, via metaphor, that the conduct being described is inherently harmful. They don’t always have the desired effect—consider, for instance, the name chosen by the creators of The Pirate Bay.

Because there's never been a universal consensus as to what, exactly, "piracy" and "theft" mean when used in the copyright context, different people with different agendas use them to evoke different concepts. George Orwell famously criticized the "dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power" after being repeatedly used by people who no longer even know what they originally meant. That's sort of what's going on in today's copyright debate with "piracy" and "theft," but with the twist that the meanings of these metaphors were never particularly clear to begin with.

The result? Otherwise intelligent people sounding... rather confused. Check out these monstrously muddled musings from a recent HuffingtonPost article by Eric Clemons, an information management professor at Wharton:

"Piracy is a complicated issue," he begins, without defining the term. "Is online piracy really theft?" Clemons asks a few lines later, still without offering a definition. "Absolutely. As the laws regarding intellectual property are current [sic] written, most forms of online piracy are theft; examples include as [sic] downloading works of music, entire movies, or software that has been cracked so that it can be used without a key or proof of ownership."

This is fatally imprecise. Read literally, it suggests I can't even download songs off iTunes without becoming a pirate. Read with an eye towards unauthorized downloads, it still raises questions —if I download content in a way that does violate the law, even just once, am I suddenly in the same boat (so to speak) as Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom?

"Other uses of copyrighted content," Clemons continues, "like the use of lead paragraphs from newspaper or magazine stories, may be protected as 'fair use' even [sic] ‘too much fair use’ may they harm [sic] the owners of the intellectual property... But most piracy is theft, and most piracy is illegal."

Hmmm. Clemons's piece may very well be Exhibit A in the case for more precise nomenclature within the copyright debate (and, perhaps, for better proofreading). But before that change can happen, it's important to understand the significance of "piracy" and "theft" in current copyright statutes, where the terms came from, and what users of these metaphors are really trying to say.

"Infringement" by any other name?

Some lawyers and academics specializing in copyright law wouldn't be caught dead using either "piracy" or "theft" in the copyright context. The reason? It's not technically accurate. Contrary to Clemons' depiction, these terms don't appear in existing US statutes on conduct that violates copyright protections—"infringement" is the official term. (Clemons's piece references "infringement" exactly zero times.)

"I don't think there's anything wrong with 'infringement,'" William Patry, a prolific copyright scholar who currently serves as senior copyright counsel at Google, told Ars Technica. Patry argues that metaphors like "piracy," when used in the copyright context, are "political, not descriptive."

In the US, individual pieces of copyright legislation have often had titles containing "piracy" or "theft." And, not surprisingly, the text of the recently controversial, content industry-backed Stop Online Piracy Act featured multiple appearances of both words. But technically speaking, "infringement" is the term that currently carries official significance.

Terry Hart, who runs the popular law blog Copyhype, told me that it's important to remember that "piracy" and "theft" were being used in the copyright context by American judges long before the rise of "infringement" (which was first inserted into US copyright statutes in 1870.) Americans didn't invent this metaphor usage; we inherited—misappropriated?—it from the British. Historians, including Adrian Johns of the University of Chicago, trace the origins of metaphor-tinged copyright-related rhetoric to the explosion of the printing industry roughly half-a-millennium ago. Those who stood to profit from sales of original content needed a way to simultaneously express their frustration at, and dissuade others from engaging in, unauthorized use of their work. What better way than to liken rogue printers and booksellers to criminals?

By 1710, when the British established a formal system for government-regulated copyright protections, authors like Defoe had been throwing around "piracy" and "theft" for a number of years. The metaphor-slinging went intercontinental in the 19th century, when the fledgling US government refused to honor copyrights protecting British books, prompting the Brits to label their former colony "The Barbary Coast." (According to Patry, the Yankee policy constituted a cost-effective means of promoting literacy among a relatively undereducated American populace.)

"Usage [of these metaphors] spikes at moments of tension," Johns told me. Like the moment in the middle of the 20th century, following the rise of unregulated ("pirate") radio transmissions. Currently, we appear to be at the crest of a new spike with origins in 1980s Taper Culture.

K. Matthew Dames, a copyright scholar at Syracuse, remembers noticing an uptick in media coverage of copyright infringement in the mid-70s, when VHS first hit the US market; the film industry voiced fears that the new medium would destroy their business. (Majid Yar, a sociologist at the UK's University of Hull, called my attention to the fact that in 1980s Britain, the British Phonographic Industry waged an anti-taping campaign featuring a Jolly Roger-style logo with a cassette as the skull.)

By the end of the 1980s, you simply weren't cool if you didn't own a Maxell poster; the decade was capped off by Christian Slater's unforgettable portrayal of a cassette-loving teen with his very own pirate radio program.

Dow Jones' Factiva has been compiling print editions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal since 1980, which makes it possible to analyze word-use frequency in both papers. From 1980 to 1985, "piracy" (and derivations thereof) and/or "theft" appeared in copyright-related articles at a rate of roughly 20 per year; the 1985-1990 rate was around 30. The advent of digital content saw the use-incidence rate rise to approximately 55 per year from 1990 to 1998 before exploding when the mp3/ripping/file-sharing craze gave birth to Napster. Between 1999 and 2001—Napster's years of existence—the use-incidence rate leapt to nearly 110 annually. It's averaged around 95 in the last decade.

The starting point for any honest debate is what is a copyright infringer?

According to the copyright maximalist interpretation of the law I am a copyright infringer if I copy my neighbor's music collection.

It leaves us with the fascinating possibility that millions everyday infringe copyright, and either are ignorant or don't care.

If the law was to be enforced in 50, 80 or 100 percent of all cases, the copyright maximalists would have to explain why all infringers are criminals.

As the law is not enforced now in very many cases, copyright maximalists get both parts of the deal. They can claim that the majority of the public supports the copyright infringement is theft argument, while dishonestly arguing that the law should *potentially* catch even private noncommercial infringement.

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

The starting point for any honest debate is what is a copyright infringer?

According to the copyright maximalist interpretation of the law I am a copyright infringer if I copy my neighbor's music collection.

Actually, according to the music and movie lobbyists, you are also an infringer if you backup your own legally owned music and movies to a second disk to prevent wear and tear on the original. Likewise for MP3 players and other systems that are not supported directly.

Tangent... But I know some people that got hauled into court on charges of Piracy. They climbed onto a boat in the middle of a lake and used it as a diving board. Terror on the high seas apparently also applies to any large body of fresh water too (and, trespassing is apparently "terror" when nobody is even on the boat).

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

Sounds like a job for the MIT license?

Thanks for pointing that one out, I'm only seeking attribution.

Piracy - has become glamourous

Theft - doesn't fit well with digital works as the original copy remains after the so-called 'theft' has taken place, counter-arguments which rely on this being a 'theft' of potential profits from a legitimate digital download is usually countered by people claiming that there was no loss of profits as they wouldn't have paid for the data if there was no illegitimate free copy available to them; however, it can be argued that there is a secondary effect of those who would have paid for what they wanted feeling dumb to do so because so few people apparently are - this is akin to paying for chewing gum during a riot.

Infringement - sounds woolly and partial, when it is more often definite and total.

Disrespect - captures what is really going on before the issues are complicated by licences, money andprotection mechanisms - the fundamental ethical truth is that we should all respect each others hard work, even if that is put altruistically into the public domain, something which connects to plagiarism.

Yep, semantics. Whatever word you use, it's still illegal. If you don't want it to be illegal, fair enough. Just don't expect sophomoric debates about vocabulary are going to carry any weight.

Most sophomoric debates about whether copyright infringement is only illegal or theft are only relevant because copyright law covers even private sharing among family and friends.Let me ask you a question: Is it illegal to make a copy of a cd I have bought from Amazon and give it to my brother or sister?

If it's illegal and theft, the logical implication is that all members of the public who are repeat violators (committing multiple copyright violations) should be in prison or in bankrupcy.

Does my downloading of a movie from the Internet somehow diminish the value of the original work?And, if it does, what does that say about the value of the original work? And shouldn't its value be dictated by the market? Value is subject to supply and demand. Value is strictly in the eye of the beholder.

That brings me to the second problem,

If the company who produces the work doesn't value it appropriately to the market, should there be laws protecting their ability to overprice their products and prohibiting any competition in distribution?

If the company who produces the work doesn't value it appropriately to the market, should there be laws protecting their ability to overprice their products and prohibiting any competition in distribution?

There's some fallacious logic with your statement. In the market, barring supply limitations, free will _always_ win, regardless of the value of the work.

I would agree with an argument in favor of less artificial pricing and availability (e.g. not releasing DVDs until 6-12 months after the movie comes out), but that's a far sight from "if it's being pirated, it's because it's economic worth is actually zero".

Does my downloading of a movie from the Internet somehow diminish the value of the original work?

To play devil's advocate: Yes. That's exactly the position of the movie studios. Because if people are getting the work for free, that diminishes the potential monetary value of the same work in a store.

It doesn't end all sales, it just reduces what people would be willing to pay.

And to some extent, online music sales, app sales, and even the pricing of e-books confirms this, because people appear to have an expectation that digital distribution should result in significantly lower prices.

Semantics aside, I think it's a bit of a straw man to be saying that this is a fight between the poor innocent downloaders and the big bad RIAA/MPAA. Those truly suffering are the independents. For some good perspective from musicians' viewpoints, read some of the articles at http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/.

And sorry, but torrentfreak is NOT a legitimate source of information. Just sayin'.

If the company who produces the work doesn't value it appropriately to the market, should there be laws protecting their ability to overprice their products and prohibiting any competition in distribution?

Current law like this. The holder of a copyright has an exclusive distribution right.

Whether the exclusive distribution right is a good thing, you ask? Copyright has no value without it. I would change other things about the copyright system before I would change that. I would change the copyright term first.

The starting point for any honest debate is what is a copyright infringer?

According to the copyright maximalist interpretation of the law I am a copyright infringer if I copy my neighbor's music collection.

It leaves us with the fascinating possibility that millions everyday infringe copyright, and either are ignorant or don't care.

Actually, that violates copyright by almost any definition in any century. You're also infringing when you record a song off the radio. Of course, until relatively recently, there was no way to track such activity, so the media companies didn't freak out about it.

Also, there is a media tax added to blank cassette and blank "audio" CDs. (FYI, that is the ONLY difference between such "audio" CD's and normal blank "data" CDs, btw.) So it was assumed that you were using blank media to pirate material and you were charged accordingly. But now, there is no way for them to get that pirate tax.

The internet and the high quality of home studio equipment today is also eroding their purpose as a middle-man between musicians and fans. The comparison to buggy whip makers is apt, except this time around, the government is going to ridiculous lengths to help the buggy whip makers hang in there.

Current law like this. The holder of a copyright has an exclusive distribution right.

And if that exclusive distribution right makes me a lawbreaker for giving a copy of my music collection to my children, sister or brother, enforcing said exclusive right must necessarily trump my right to privacy and free expression.

The public should simply answer the question: Should the exclusive right of distribution granted by copyright law extend to private noncommercial copying among family and friends and should there be any punishment for violating the exclusive right.

Since Ars so obviously loves to put their point of view out there about how piracy and intellectual property infringement aren't so bad, are you going to quit using the term identify theft anytime soon? Really, those poor people are just sharing information and you haven't lost access to, say, your SSN or credit card number.

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

Sounds like a job for the MIT license?

Or you could just publish it in some peer reviewed technical journal. Or you could just skip the peer review part. You could even just release the code in the public domain.

Either way, you have to make it public. Otherwise, you can't point to it as prior art. No amount of whining about the GPL will change that.

The starting point for any honest debate is what is a copyright infringer?

According to the copyright maximalist interpretation of the law I am a copyright infringer if I copy my neighbor's music collection.

It leaves us with the fascinating possibility that millions everyday infringe copyright, and either are ignorant or don't care.

Actually, that violates copyright by almost any definition in any century. You're also infringing when you record a song off the radio. Of course, until relatively recently, there was no way to track such activity, so the media companies didn't freak out about it.

Also, there is a media tax added to blank cassette and blank "audio" CDs. (FYI, that is the ONLY difference between such "audio" CD's and normal blank "data" CDs, btw.) So it was assumed that you were using blank media to pirate material and you were charged accordingly. But now, there is no way for them to get that pirate tax.

In some European countries, there is even a levy on blank media on the theory that rights holders should be compensated for the buyer being allowed to copy a legally bought cd for his own use.

Rick Falkvinge had a good article on how the copyright lobby never gets enough.The argument that I first should pay for a cd, and then be taxed for making a legal copy of that cd for my own use blows my mind.In France there was a proposal for an internet tax, and guess file sharing would not be legalized as a consequence of the public subsidizing the copyright industry.Copyright is extortion.

Does my downloading of a movie from the Internet somehow diminish the value of the original work?And, if it does, what does that say about the value of the original work? And shouldn't its value be dictated by the market? Value is subject to supply and demand. Value is strictly in the eye of the beholder.

That brings me to the second problem,

If the company who produces the work doesn't value it appropriately to the market, should there be laws protecting their ability to overprice their products and prohibiting any competition in distribution?

I am certain those laws exist however they are used so sparringly its almost as if they want it to go on to boost tax revenue. Apple and the booksellers are currently up on charges of distorting the online bookmarket to their advantage.

Here's a suggestion: write a future article on the use of "content industry", "content creator", "big content" in place of "artist". My intuition is that people would be more concerned about copyright infringement of the digital works of anyone who sells it directly (e.g. over the Internet) than about copyright infringement of the digital works sold by distributors, syndicates, or associations.

As technology evolves, deprivation-of-value is more likely to involve intangible things. For example, under American federal law, "identity theft" can be effectuated by copying and using for nefarious purposes numerical combinations assigned to a particular person by a government agency. What's the practical difference between appropriating someone's Social Security number in order to set up a bogus line of credit and downloading for free a song being sold commercially? Both cause deprivation-of-value to the intended beneficiary.

The practical difference is that "identity theft" (more correctly, identity fraud) involves claiming to be someone one is not. Often with infringement, at least the social kind mostly found online, one is fully aware that the copy is not authorized in any way, and the person downloading do not care.

A potential better example would be fencing,

The problem i see with copyright today is the insistence of treating someone that downloads for personal entertainment, perhaps as a alternative to setting up a DVR, with that of someone printing up a stack of DVDs and then standing on a street corner and selling them to pedestrians.

Does my downloading of a movie from the Internet somehow diminish the value of the original work?

To play devil's advocate: Yes. That's exactly the position of the movie studios. Because if people are getting the work for free, that diminishes the potential monetary value of the same work in a store.

It doesn't end all sales, it just reduces what people would be willing to pay.

And to some extent, online music sales, app sales, and even the pricing of e-books confirms this, because people appear to have an expectation that digital distribution should result in significantly lower prices.

Piracy doesn't create this effect. Digital distribution does. People realize that the marginal production cost of a copy is zero. So their primitive scavenger minds assigns a zero value to the product. They do so because the physical product no longer exists.

It doesn't help when people see how cheaply a physical copy can be made. This can be just the single copied disk or the entire standard sorts of packaging. Better communications exacerbates all of this by making sure that everyone knows how cheap they could make their own run of DVDs.

In general, no one cares about the initial engineering cost required to produce that first factory stamped item. It's really not the consumer's problem.

And if that exclusive distribution right makes me a lawbreaker for giving a copy of my music collection to my children, sister or brother, enforcing said exclusive right must necessarily trump my right to privacy and free expression.

On what grounds is a right to privacy and/or free expression ever a defense to anything. Any charge of conspiracy or incitement would be impossible if you could claim an expectation of privacy or free expression. You are saying that anything is okay if you don't expect to get caught.

musicliberty wrote:

The public should simply answer the question: Should the exclusive right of distribution granted by copyright law extend to private noncommercial copying among family and friends and should there be any punishment for violating the exclusive right.

Yes, if family and friends want a copy of a protected work, they should buy it. If it isn't worth paying for, they don't want a copy. If they can't afford it, then the publisher should lower the price, not have the decision taken out of their hands. If it promotes a band, the publisher should be giving it away for free.

DragonTHC wrote:

If the company who produces the work doesn't value it appropriately to the market, should there be laws protecting their ability to overprice their products and prohibiting any competition in distribution?

As technology evolves, deprivation-of-value is more likely to involve intangible things. For example, under American federal law, "identity theft" can be effectuated by copying and using for nefarious purposes numerical combinations assigned to a particular person by a government agency. What's the practical difference between appropriating someone's Social Security number in order to set up a bogus line of credit and downloading for free a song being sold commercially? Both cause deprivation-of-value to the intended beneficiary.

The practical difference is that "identity theft" (more correctly, identity fraud) involves claiming to be someone one is not. Often with infringement, at least the social kind mostly found online, one is fully aware that the copy is not authorized in any way, and the person downloading do not care.

A potential better example would be fencing,

The problem i see with copyright today is the insistence of treating someone that downloads for personal entertainment, perhaps as a alternative to setting up a DVR, with that of someone printing up a stack of DVDs and then standing on a street corner and selling them to pedestrians.

The confusion between copyright piracy and identity theft is just a bad side effect of trying to treat every worthless scrap of paper as if it were the next great masterpiece. Things are not published works by default. They should not be treated as published works by default. Ones private papers aren't "intellectual property". There should be a clear distinction here and there isn't one. That's a direct result of recent distortions in copyright law.

"Piracy is a complicated issue," he begins, without defining the term. "Is online piracy really theft?" Clemons asks a few lines later, still without offering a definition. "Absolutely. As the laws regarding intellectual property are current [sic] written, most forms of online piracy are theft; examples include as [sic] downloading works of music, entire movies, or software that has been cracked so that it can be used without a key or proof of ownership."

This is fatally imprecise. Read literally, it suggests I can't even download songs off iTunes without becoming a pirate.

? The quoted bit reads that Clemons is arguing that (most) piracy is theft, not that downloading is automatically piracy.

Admittedly, I would be curious to know what forms of online piracy are not theft according to Clemons.

Let me ask you a question: Is it illegal to make a copy of a cd I have bought from Amazon and give it to my brother or sister?

Yes.

You're trying to "have your cake and eat it" - i.e. you retain the original CD after the gift to your sibling.

However, I have been thinking that it would be convenient if people could download games to their profile on the upcoming Xbox 1080 and play them co-operatively at a friend's house when they visit, or lend them. For this to work, the friend would need to download the game into a cache without having to pay for it first. This is similar to how Sky+HD Box Office movies are recorded from Satellite and then (optionally) unlocked via the consumer's PIN number at which point their account is charged. This encourages you to obtain movies even if you may get invited out that evening as you only pay for what you end up seeing. Similarly, the 1080 could allow your friend to dowload a game without ever paying for it as the console would temporarily unlock it via your profile when you visited them with it on a memory card. The idea being that they would get hooked and so miss not being able to play the title whilst you were away that they would pay to unlock it as well.

So, shared same-site consumption looks to be the only legitimate form of parallel use. The iTunes license is interesting as it appears to only permit serial use by multiple users at multiple sites. Are you ok if you don't listen to the CD when your siblings listen to their copy and vice versa?

I don't know.

It is more respectful to the spirit of the (implied) "serial" licence, but ultimately it is indefensible.

That said, I feel it is a greater illegal act to upload a digital copy, than to download or make one for brothers and sisters. However, if your sister were to upload her digital copy to a file-sharing site she would be in a lot more trouble than you. I don't even think the file-sharing site is particularly culpable here as it is onerous to validate the innocence of the many files they host - especially as some could be encrypted for peers. So, I would advise everyone to stop using sites that require them to seed data files of dubious provenance.

And if that exclusive distribution right makes me a lawbreaker for giving a copy of my music collection to my children, sister or brother, enforcing said exclusive right must necessarily trump my right to privacy and free expression.

On what grounds is a right to privacy and/or free expression ever a defense to anything. Any charge of

It's not a "defense". It is simply more important.

Copyright is not a right. It is a means to achieve a public policy objective. It represents an enumerated power granted to a particular entity. That enumerated power may come in conflict with other rules that the same entity has to obey.

It's simply a matter of Law & Order.

The 1st and 5th amendments (and the others) aren't simply good ideas. They are the law.

And if that exclusive distribution right makes me a lawbreaker for giving a copy of my music collection to my children, sister or brother, enforcing said exclusive right must necessarily trump my right to privacy and free expression.

Quote:

On what grounds is a right to privacy and/or free expression ever a defense to anything. Any charge of conspiracy or incitement would be impossible if you could claim an expectation of privacy or free expression. You are saying that anything is okay if you don't expect to get caught.

Privacy and free expression are not legally viable defenses to copyright infringement, but they are policy arguments appealing to the taxpayer who may not like his children going to prison merely to please a mega corporation.

musicliberty wrote:

The public should simply answer the question: Should the exclusive right of distribution granted by copyright law extend to private noncommercial copying among family and friends and should there be any punishment for violating the exclusive right.

Quote:

Yes, if family and friends want a copy of a protected work, they should buy it. If it isn't worth paying for, they don't want a copy. If they can't afford it, then the publisher should lower the price, not have the decision taken out of their hands. If it promotes a band, the publisher should be giving it away for free.

The decision to grant copyright is only a policy choice.

Copyright isn't and was never intended to be a natural or moral right. Framing my argument as taking away the decision from the copyright holder is misplaced, since copyright only exists to benefit the public.

The benefit to the public is the only justification for granting copyright, and scaling back copyright is therefore not taking something from the copyright holder to which he is entitled.

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

The Berne Convention laws gives you automatic copyright to anything you create with. If someone were to take your code and use it to create a patent based on your idea, you could hit them with copyright infringement for using your code without authorization. (Although, you could also argue that the code they used as an example for the patent is actually prior art which would be interesting for the Patent Office to decide)